Its cemetery is the favoured burial ground of the City Watch. The city of Ankh-Morpork has a Temple of Small Gods, which provides spiritual solace to those who, while they may accept the idea of a deistic presence in the universe, don't really have a clue what it might be. It could be argued that the great god Om, having been reduced to just one true believer, was a household god for most of Small Gods.

The Unseen University was plagued by a plethora of household gods in Hogfather when a surfeit of belief caused by the Hogfather's absence led to their uncontrolled random generation. Therefore, while the following is large, the god Om himself is very small, both in size and power.Ī household god on the Discworld is a small god that has a limited number of committed believers, perhaps only one, but nonetheless enough to manifest in a specific visible form. It is well established in the novel Small Gods that while many people call themselves Omnians, only one (Brutha) actually believes.

Such a god may still have memory of its former days, but its identity will be almost completely lost, even to itself.Ī god may become small even if it has a large following. The other, far rarer kind of small god is one that was once worshipped by large numbers of people across a vast area, but is all but forgotten now. There is an almost infinite number of these gods on the Disc Pratchett compares their hidden ubiquity to that of bacteria in our world.

There are two very different kinds, by far the most common being those who have yet to accumulate enough human belief to obtain any true power or purpose. They do not manifest as great anthropomorphic titans of the sky but rather, if they are noticed at all, as a simple, faceless presence. They are the gods of slightly significant places the hair rising on the back of your neck as you enter a suddenly still glade. They do however possess analogues in our world, particularly the Graeco-Roman concept of numina or the Japanese kami. Small gods are a special classification of deity unique to the fictional Discworld universe created by author Terry Pratchett. For the Discworld novel also called Small Gods, see Small Gods (novel).įor other gods or godlike beings in the Discworld universe, see Discworld gods This article is about the concept of small gods.

Download discworld small gods